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My younger sister did a much-appreciated Ph D in Telugu and retired as the Principal of a Government College in AP. Her thesis was printed and published by the TTD at Tirupati...it was on Annamacharya.
One day when she was at my mom's place, my mom asked her how precisely is Vidura in Mahabharata related to Yudhistira...my mom, like me, is very curious about things that don't concern her. My sister couldn't give an off-hand answer and asked for time to go home and do a bit of consulting in her University Library.
Those were days when Internet was unheard of. My sister gave the answer to her viva question on her next visit to my mom. I was of course of little use in such intricate family affairs of the Chandra Vamsha dynasty...nor for that matter the Surya Vamsha...
This morning I found the answer in one minute on Google. It gave the entire family tree of the clan. With a cute diagram. Family trees are tough to disentangle without diagrams. Because they are not linear but branch out with cross connections at tedious nodes...and antinodes for that matter ;)
My Father remembered the names, gotras, and genealogy of all his uncles, aunties, cousins and their progeny. I don't even know the names of my first cousins' spouses and kids. When I took my parents on a pilgrimage to Gaya, Father wanted to do pindadan to his ancestors on both sides. I thought they wouldn't be more than a dozen...it turned out that number of pindas that the poor pundit had to roll out exceeded a 100. And I gave the poor chap a hefty tip for his labors.
Father wanted to perpetuate his clan of Tummagunta Dravidas of Nellore District. Unfortunately we couldn't find eligible brides and grooms of our narrow clan for any of Father's six daughters or his only son who took to blogging about it later on.
All his kids married outside their clan...I married a Madhva bride who is not even of our sub-religion. So too none of his grandsons or granddaughters. But miraculously my only son (of Father's strict lineage) got hitched to a Tummagunta Dravida bride of Nellore...after inspecting and rejecting about 120 matches (most of them dubious) in the Matrimony portals. Father's soul must be resting in peace...his clan is now adorned by little Ishani. I was even prepared to let my son marry one of his Bengali batchmates from school at IIT KGP if they so wished.
Talking of diagrams, physicists' minds are full of them...from Free Body Diagrams to Feynman Diagrams. My Guru, SDM reveled in them. He would draw diagrams to help him in his calculations and then throw them (the diagrams) into the dustbin. None of his papers have a single diagram. I asked him why. And he gave a naughty smile and said: "Let the reader draw his own diagrams if he can"
He took over as the HoD of our Department for a year in 1974. And called a meeting of final year students and asked them about their issues with the Dept. All the 25 groaned:
"Sir, the syllabus lists 10 free electives but only 3 have been offered for decades and all of us are unhappy with it...the electives are not so 'free'."
So he promised them that he would run all the 10 electives provided they could find teachers wiling to offer them and students to listen. And there were. So, he asked the Time Table Prof to collect lists of students interested in taking them and teachers willing to offer them. The house was full.
Late one evening I was waiting outside SDM's office. After a while, the TT Prof walked out of the HoD's office in good spirits. And I entered the room and found SDM rubbing his hands in glee. After a minute he said to me:
"This man is supposed to be a Theoretical Physicist. But he brought me sheaves of papers announcing that it is IMPOSSIBLE to run all the 10 electives...there are innumerable constraints like availability of teachers, class rooms, students and time slots matching one another. I then took his papers and within 5 minutes I solved his problem...he ought to have drawn a diagram!"
Of course he must have torn the slip containing his diagram without passing it on to the TT Prof....naughty boy.
The Holy Bible is replete with extended lineages both in the Old and the New Testaments. Without a single diagram of their family trees.
For instance, here are the opening lines of the Gospel of Matthews:
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My younger sister did a much-appreciated Ph D in Telugu and retired as the Principal of a Government College in AP. Her thesis was printed and published by the TTD at Tirupati...it was on Annamacharya.
One day when she was at my mom's place, my mom asked her how precisely is Vidura in Mahabharata related to Yudhistira...my mom, like me, is very curious about things that don't concern her. My sister couldn't give an off-hand answer and asked for time to go home and do a bit of consulting in her University Library.
Those were days when Internet was unheard of. My sister gave the answer to her viva question on her next visit to my mom. I was of course of little use in such intricate family affairs of the Chandra Vamsha dynasty...nor for that matter the Surya Vamsha...
This morning I found the answer in one minute on Google. It gave the entire family tree of the clan. With a cute diagram. Family trees are tough to disentangle without diagrams. Because they are not linear but branch out with cross connections at tedious nodes...and antinodes for that matter ;)
My Father remembered the names, gotras, and genealogy of all his uncles, aunties, cousins and their progeny. I don't even know the names of my first cousins' spouses and kids. When I took my parents on a pilgrimage to Gaya, Father wanted to do pindadan to his ancestors on both sides. I thought they wouldn't be more than a dozen...it turned out that number of pindas that the poor pundit had to roll out exceeded a 100. And I gave the poor chap a hefty tip for his labors.
Father wanted to perpetuate his clan of Tummagunta Dravidas of Nellore District. Unfortunately we couldn't find eligible brides and grooms of our narrow clan for any of Father's six daughters or his only son who took to blogging about it later on.
All his kids married outside their clan...I married a Madhva bride who is not even of our sub-religion. So too none of his grandsons or granddaughters. But miraculously my only son (of Father's strict lineage) got hitched to a Tummagunta Dravida bride of Nellore...after inspecting and rejecting about 120 matches (most of them dubious) in the Matrimony portals. Father's soul must be resting in peace...his clan is now adorned by little Ishani. I was even prepared to let my son marry one of his Bengali batchmates from school at IIT KGP if they so wished.
Talking of diagrams, physicists' minds are full of them...from Free Body Diagrams to Feynman Diagrams. My Guru, SDM reveled in them. He would draw diagrams to help him in his calculations and then throw them (the diagrams) into the dustbin. None of his papers have a single diagram. I asked him why. And he gave a naughty smile and said: "Let the reader draw his own diagrams if he can"
He took over as the HoD of our Department for a year in 1974. And called a meeting of final year students and asked them about their issues with the Dept. All the 25 groaned:
"Sir, the syllabus lists 10 free electives but only 3 have been offered for decades and all of us are unhappy with it...the electives are not so 'free'."
So he promised them that he would run all the 10 electives provided they could find teachers wiling to offer them and students to listen. And there were. So, he asked the Time Table Prof to collect lists of students interested in taking them and teachers willing to offer them. The house was full.
Late one evening I was waiting outside SDM's office. After a while, the TT Prof walked out of the HoD's office in good spirits. And I entered the room and found SDM rubbing his hands in glee. After a minute he said to me:
"This man is supposed to be a Theoretical Physicist. But he brought me sheaves of papers announcing that it is IMPOSSIBLE to run all the 10 electives...there are innumerable constraints like availability of teachers, class rooms, students and time slots matching one another. I then took his papers and within 5 minutes I solved his problem...he ought to have drawn a diagram!"
Of course he must have torn the slip containing his diagram without passing it on to the TT Prof....naughty boy.
The Holy Bible is replete with extended lineages both in the Old and the New Testaments. Without a single diagram of their family trees.
For instance, here are the opening lines of the Gospel of Matthews:
| 1 | The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. |
| 2 | ¶ Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judah and his brethren; |
| 3 | and Judah begat Pharez and Zerah of Tamar; and Pharez begat Hezron; and Hezron begat Ram; |
| 4 | and Ram begat Ammin'adab; and Ammin'adab begat Nahshon; and Nahshon begat Salmon; |
| 5 | and Salmon begat Boaz of Rachab; and Boaz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; |
| 6 |
and Jesse begat David the king. ¶ And David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uri'ah; |
| 7 | and Solomon begat Rehobo'am; and Rehobo'am begat Abi'jah; and Abi'jah begat Asa; |
| 8 | and Asa begat Jehosh'aphat; and Jehosh'aphat begat Jeho'ram; and Jeho'ram begat Uzzi'ah; |
| 9 | and Uzzi'ah begat Jotham; and Jotham begat Ahaz; and Ahaz begat Hezeki'ah; |
| 10 | and Hezeki'ah begat Manas'seh; and Manas'seh begat Amon; and Amon begat Josi'ah; |
| 11 | and Josi'ah begat Jeconi'ah and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon. |
| 12 | ¶ And after they were brought to Babylon, Jeconi'ah begat She-al'ti-el; and She-al'ti-el begat Zerub'babel; |
| 13 | and Zerub'babel begat Abi'ud; and Abi'ud begat Eli'akim; and Eli'akim begat Azor; |
| 14 | and Azor begat Zadok; and Zadok begat Achim; and Achim begat Eli'ud; |
| 15 | and Eli'ud begat Ele-a'zar; and Ele-a'zar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; |
| 16 | and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. |
| 17 | ¶ So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations. |
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Margherita's Family Tree
...'It's all over!' she stated almost aggressively. 'Until yesterday I was up against your overwhelming personality, defenceless and alone. But now I have a Pope and a long line of Counts behind me.'
All I could see behind her was large wardrobe, and this didn't particularly impress me.
....'A man came the other day,' she explained, 'a very earnest fellow, a scholar. He said that in the course of some historical research he had occasion to examine my family tree and found all sorts of important people, people with titles and high military rank, yes, even a Pope. He happened to be passing this way, and so he stopped in to tell me. Within a week he'll send me the coat-of-arms and its complete story.'
...'I hope you gave him an advance on the coat-of-arms and its story,' I said at last.
'Of course, I wasn't going to let a chance like that get away.'
...We held the parchment up to the light to examine it more closely and under Margherita's name was Gabuzzi.
I threw out my arms in despair.
'It's no mix-up, Margherita,' I told her. 'Your scholar friend sent this collect to someone called Gabuzzi, who refused to accept it. Then he covered Gabuzzi with purple ink and wrote in your name. But because he couldn't erase the India ink entirely, he put you down as belonging to a collateral branch of the Gabutti family...'
...From The House that Nino Built
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